"Alphabet Shoot" is another physics-based flash game. I've solved all the levels except 24, 29, 30, and 3 of the custom levels. Update - finally got 24 and one more of the customs. Second update - FINALLY got 29; you have to load all three cannons first, then fire D, S, and F in succession. And got 30 with the recommended combination shots.

As with all my smorgasbord-type posts, the photos above are unrelated. These come from a National Geographic's International Photography Contest last year, and they all biggify quite nicely.

I use the "smörgåsbord" format for items that I have neither time nor inclination to devote a full post to. Articles about the economy tend to be sufficiently gloomy that I really don't want to spend time pondering them in depth. But some have info that someone may want or which I may want to link to later. Herewith some links that have been sequestered in a bookmark folder for several months. Pick and choose, or just skip down to the more cheerful little girl in the blue dress.

The state of Minnesota, traditionally economically strong, is facing financial woes, including severe budget deficits, with many banks at risk not because of the housing crisis alone, but because of the ongoing weakness of the commercial banking sector. The Financial Times discusses the latter problem in greater detail.

Several prestigious universities have reported precipitous falls in their endowments because in recent years they shifted their assets from low-return investments to more risky collateralized capital ventures. The same crisis is less well known, but equally severe in many cultural institutions such as museums and operas.

The Washington Post is reporting today that millions of dollars are leaving Afghanistan, and American officials have no idea about the source of the money.

But at a time when the United States and its allies are spending billions of dollars to prop up the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai, the volume of the outflow has stirred concerns that funds have been diverted from aid. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan's thriving opium trade. And officials in neighboring Pakistan think that at least some of the cash leaving Kabul has been smuggled overland from Pakistan.

"All this money magically appears from nowhere," said a U.S. official...

The total volume of departing cash is almost certainly much higher than the declared amount. A Chinese man, for instance, was arrested recently at the Kabul airport carrying 800,000 undeclared euros (about $1.1 million).

Cash also can be moved easily through a VIP section at the airport, from which Afghan officials generally leave without being searched... One U.S. official said he had been told by a senior Dubai police officer that an Afghan diplomat flew into the emirate's airport last year with more than $2 million worth of euros in undeclared cash...

The cash flown out of Kabul includes a wide range of foreign currencies. Most is in U.S. dollars, euros and -- to the bafflement of officials -- Saudi Arabian riyals, a currency not widely used in Afghanistan.

Last month, a well-dressed Afghan man en route to Dubai was found carrying three briefcases stuffed with $3 million in U.S. currency and $2 million in Saudi currency, according to an American official who was present when the notes were counted. A few days later, the same man was back at the Kabul airport, en route to Dubai again, with about $5 million in U.S. and Saudi bank notes.

In 1850, 10-year-old Stephen Bentley arrived with his family at the river town of Cassell, in Sauk County. Wisconsin’s lumber industry was just beginning to flourish, and every day its products floated past the town on their way to the Mississippi.

“Raftsmen often stopped at our house to get something to eat,” he recalled, “and sometimes hired my father or myself to boat them across the slough or to their stuck rafts.” Young Bentley would listen intently to the colorful stories of people such as raft pilot Buckskin Brown, who related a unique experience his crew had one night in Sauk City.

After a hard day’s work, Brown’s men had tied up on the riverbank and made their way up to a tavern. Possessing a powerful thirst but no money with which to relieve it, “they carried a bunch of shingles up to the saloon and offered it in lieu of cash.” This sat well with the saloon keeper, who asked them to stack the shingles in the backyard. A little while later, still parched, they decided to sneak the same batch of shingles around to the front, where they sold them a second time for another round of drinks.

Over the course of the evening, they repeated the trick so often that the exact number of trades got lost in an alcoholic haze. Brown estimated that same bunch of shingles was resold 11 times. And wanting to leave the tavern tidy, the lumberjacks even carried it back to the raft when they silently pushed offshore in the dark.

For now, we don't know how the mother crickets manage to tip off their young. Their behaviour could be changed through "epigenetic" means, by adding molecular tags onto their DNA that change the way specific genes are used and controlled. A mother could also convey information to her unborn young with hormones. By placing the right balance of hormones into her eggs, she could influence the development of her offspring's defensive behaviour...

"The first one is this: God's in charge. God is in charge ... In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn't say we're endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It's by our creator that we are given these rights."

Pawlenty trashed anyone who attended "Ivy League schools" or who go to "chablis-drinking, brie-eating parties in San Francisco"... It sounded like a parody of Pat Buchanan's famous 1992 "culture war" speech. Except that Pawlenty is one of the Republicans' two most plausible candidates for president in 2012...

[In 2007 the other plausible candidate Mitt] Romney called for tolerance only among believers, explicitly omitting non-believers. "Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me," Romney said. "And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith."

"Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious."

23 February 2010

Q: I have never seen it warm on Canadian TV, so how do the plants grow?(UK)
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around and watch them die.

Q: Will I be able to see Polar Bears in the street? (USA)
A: Depends on how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Vancouver to Toronto. Can I follow the Railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it's only Four thousand miles, take lots of water.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into Canada? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in British Columbia where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Toronto and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of Vegan hunter/gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Canada, but I forget its name. Its a kind of big horse with horns. (USA)
A: Its called a Moose. They are tall and very violent, eating the brains of anyone walking close to them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

As explained at Snopes, these are all "fake" questions. More at the link.

22 February 2010

It's hard to believe this song was released 30 years ago. It seems like only... 20. It was named one of the top 100 American musical works of the 20th century by NPR; I don't know that I would agree with that, but it was also the 59th video ever aired on MTV. Here's a link to that list, which I didn't know existed until I found it two minutes ago.

You may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself
Where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself
Am I right?... Am I wrong?
You may say to yourself
My God!... what have I done?

21 February 2010

It will surprise some people to learn that there are rock art sites in Wisconsin, a state not noted for prehistoric sites. But there are caves and rockshelters, some of which are decorated with incised or painted figures. UW Lacrosse has a webpage listing eight such sites with illustrations. The images above are from a ninth site - Tainter Cave.

The walls and ceiling contain nearly 100 charcoal drawings of birds, humans, and deer. Many are beyond natural light in the dark zone of the cave, and birch bark torches were found on the floor along with a hide moccasin.”

The paintings portray a whole new style of art. Some panels depict recognizable actions such as a group of bow hunters taking several deer, including pregnant does, in the late winter. This panel is directly beneath a group of birds, bird feet, and feathers representing a classic example of Native American separation of earth and sky. Another appears to represent an infant bound within a cradle board.

These drawings are not as artistic (to the modern eye) as the ones at Lascaux, or the spectacular ones at Chauvet, and will never be as famous as the ones in the Cave of Swimmers, but they served an important ritual or instructional purpose in their time. It's sad that sites like these have to be sealed with iron gates to prevent modern cretins from vandalizing them.

It is put on display in Russian most prominent galleries “Tretiakovka” so anyone can check it there by themselves. It shows a scene from a study process in a village school back then. There is a teacher and a bunch of children. Then all attention goes to the blackboard: It has some task for the kids that seem to puzzle them, but that’s just a temporary confusion. They all look to be ready for the challenge. The name of this art masterpiece is something like “Oral maths test in village school”. It gets what it means - no calcs involved, just mind skills of counting, even without any piece of paper and pencil. So now the question - can any contemporary city school kid do that? I am not sure.

I can't vouch for any of the above, but the Tretyakov Gallery has an immense collection of Russian fine arts, and I see no reason for the painting not to be valid.

But I can vouch for the math puzzle. You can click to enlarge the painting, but it's probably easier to reproduce it here:

Update: I am recurrently astounded by the breadth of knowledge of TYWKIWDBI readers. Today Hexmaster identified the painting and the artist - "The painting is called "Counting in their heads". It was made by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky in 1895" - and provided a link to the painting's entry in the Russian Wikipedi: The painting on the Russian Wikipedia.

Crimethinc describes itself as a "decentralized anarchist collective" for "shoplifters, rioters, dropouts, deserters, adulterers, vandals, daydreamers." Until today I didn't know the organization existed. One presumes they are active in the street protests against The New World Order at political conventions, world trade and finance meetings, etc.

The information on their poster above may or may not be valid. I would welcome comments and any corrections to its content.

Addendum: I just remember that I posted a related video several months ago: "Why You Shouldn't Talk to the Police." It was mostly about traffic violations etc., but was quite informative.

Second addendum: "The 10 legal commandments of photography" - advice re when and where photography of the public/in public places/of buildings etc. is permitted/forbidden. Somewhat abbreviated, but with links to other relevant sites.

Some activists for disabled people use an acronym - "TAB" - to refer to normal people. The letters stand for "Temporarily Able-Bodied," as a reminder that any normal healthy person is only an illness or accident away from disability. The term has been around for years, but the current Olympics has offered some striking reminders of the validity of the acronym.

20 February 2010

"...the Japanese Spider Crab has a body the size of a basketball and its legs can straddle a car. They will eventually measure a massive 15ft... The crab, called Macrocheira kaempferi in Latin, was caught by fishermen in the Pacific Ocean and has now been imported to Britain where it has gone on display at the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham.

19 February 2010

"Here’s a cool fact about this pool. Nearby, there is a huge room that was intended for a gymnasium that Hearst never constructed. The State then made it useable for IT and Archive area, so the water cools the computers… wild, eh?"

The city even trimmed its police and fire budgets and is auctioning three of its police helicopters on the Internet. Still, that's not enough... The city sold nine buses and will use the proceeds to pay operating costs this year... Colorado Springs is now considering wholesale changes to the way it operates. City leaders are thinking about selling the local utilities and a hospital...

Addendum: See Fletcher's note in the Comments thread re a contrasting situation in Oregon.

The video itself is safe for work; it contains a collection of CCTV camera footage from the hotel depicting the preparations for the killling at about the 23:00 mark. This is a long video and would be frankly tedious without the associated importance of the event. It's revealing re the activities of real-life hit squads and the amazing surveillance capabilities of modern hotels.

Those unfamiliar with the assassination can read the Wikipedia summary (or a hundred other commentaries and analyses on the web).

The Wisconsin State Journal has an article today about the Olympics-related boom in business for a curling supplies store in Madison:

Brown, who runs Steve's Curling Supplies out of his Far East Side home, gets calls from guys in bars who see the sport of curling on TV. They think it doesn't look too tough, that maybe they and their buddies could be like the Jamaican bobsled team and head from oblivion into the Olympics.

"So they'll get on a cell phone and say, ‘How much are those puck things? We want to go to the next Olympics,'" Brown said. "You tell them they cost about $500 and — boom — they hang up the phone."

Those delivering the stone need special Teflon-soled shoes to slide on the ice, and a pair of those range from $75 to the $236 shoes most Olympians are wearing. Grippers, for $16 a pair, go over the shoes to help competitors maneuver on the ice.

The top-selling brush is a $67 fiberglass model; carbon fiber ones used by Olympians cost $159...

I'll be adding them to the butterfly garden this spring if/when the snow ever melts here; I remember them from my childhood, but haven't seen them in people's gardens for decades. Hollyhocks are reported to be a good host plant for Gray Hairstreaks, Skippers, and Painted Ladies, none of which I've ever raised.

TYWKIWDBI tries to avoid promoting celebrities and "personalities," so as much as we enjoy the movies of this world-famous actress, we will ignore her identity and will focus instead only on the medical/surgical aspects of the photo, one of several taken this week in Venice that show an unusual appearance at the angle of her jaw, apparently as a result of having undergone a "thread lift."

"Thread lifts emerged because many people... would like a facelift, but can't afford it or don't want the long recovery time of the standard facelift... It is perhaps better considered as a lesser, or preliminary procedure. Thread lifts cost less and require less downtime for many people. Some plastic surgeons promote the thread lift as a "lunchtime lift" or "weekend facelift." Usually it can be performed in about one hour.

Ideal candidates for thread lifts include people with minimal signs of aging who need just a small lift. Most people who undergo thread lifts are women between 35 and 45. They choose a thread lift because they have begun to see more prominence of the jaw, a relaxed (or minimally sagging) midfacial appearance or slight bags under the eyes or on the neck."

Apparently it's a word. I encountered it in a book by O. E. Rolvaag and wondered if it was an inept translation of the Norwegian phrase "in a friendly manner." But it's in the OED with that meaning, and even in Random House, not as a separate entry but as an adverb sublisting under the adjective friendly.

The term means variation in coloration, and is perhaps most striking when it involves coloration of the iris. Wikipedia has the details re the mechanism and corollary conditions, and Environmental Graffiti has collected an assemblage of photos of cats and dogs.

People can also have heterochromia - Dan Aykroyd, David Bowie, Kiefer Sutherland and Christopher Walken are listed as examples.

From the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance (Reasoned dictionary of French furniture from the Carolingian era to the Renaissance), vol. 3 by E. Viollet-Le-Duc. Paris, 1874, which can be browsed at the Internet Archive, and which appears to have lots more neat stuff in it.

Wow. After posting the above, I went back and clicked through 350 pages of this book. It's an incredible repository of period information (wish I could read French). Here are some additional illustrations of ladies hairstyles, but the book also covers other fashion from sandals to codpiecees to crowns. And it's just volume three of a set.

This video needs to be viewed muted to block the irrelevant and distracting television or video dialogue in the background.

The creature is a feather-star (not a starfish as the YouTube title suggests), and unfortunately as noted in the Reddit discussion, will probably not do well in the aquarium because it is a filter feeder. But it is beautiful and awesome to watch.

Click to enlarge photo. Original source of photo (and location of house) unknown. I think the design would look great overlooking a lake in northern Minnesota.

Reposted from August 2009 with this addendum: Continuing the tradition that someone visiting this board will have an answer to every question I pose, "anonymous" has offered not only an identification, but reports that he has slept in the house!

17 February 2010

Since Oppenheimer was proficient in sanskrit he read the original text, and the translation is his own; I haven't found any other translation with "am become". It certainly gives a certain something to the line, however, and it might had been at least somewhat less well known had it been "I am death" or "I have become death".

Here's the verse in question with a little context (translated by Ramanand Prasad). Prince Arjuna hesitates to attack the enemy with his army; Vishnu, in the incarnation of Krishna, encourages him, and motivates him by explaining how the world works, with reincarnations, Brahman, Maya etc. Arjuna asks to see Vishnu in his "cosmic", i.e. real, form, a wish that is granted. The overwhelmed Arjuna asks:

Tell me who are You in such a fierce form? My salutations to You, O best of gods, be merciful! I wish to understand You, the primal Being, because I do not know Your mission.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, or distant relatives are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net